We're all about ARGs and procedural generation on this week's discussion with Tanya (designer on Age of Conan, Dungeons of Fayte, The Secret World, Shattered Planet and Moon Hunters) and Rob (writer on ALFA-ARKIV, Gears of War: Judgment, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Playmation, and Battlefield Hardline). Our sprawling conversation includes chatbots, transmedia narratives, creating mythologies, binary morality systems, pacing in a procedurally generated game, why haven't we moved past cutscenes in games, how procedural and systemic gameplay affects development and writing, and games based on information retrieval.

Our Guests on the Internet

Tanya's Website and Twitter

Rob's Twitter

Stuff We Talked About

Moon Hunters on Steam

ALFA-ARKIV app

itch.io

Chatscript

Versu

The Fake 'Terrorist' Conspiracy Game That Fooled People For Years by Patricia Hernandez

GDC Talk: AI-driven Dynamic Dialog through Fuzzy Pattern Matching by Elan Ruskin

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.

We've brought in Brian (who has a huge reel including: animator on Boogerman, storyboard artist for Warner Bros, writer on Jade Empire and Mass Effect 2, and lead writer on Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3) and Diandra (editor formerly at Bioware, Riot, Snail Games, XSEED, and currently Carbine Studios) for discussions on Boogerman, working at Bioware, what being an editor in games is like, application processes for writers, writing born from constraint, why we haven't seen The Wire: The Game yet, and what RTS' can do with storytelling that no other genre can do.

Our Guests on the Internet

Brian's Website and Twitter.

Diandra's Twitter.

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.

Brendon (creator of Barista, Gravity Bone, Flotilla, Air Forte, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Thirty Flights of Loving) and Brie (formerly of Ubisoft Montreal where she worked on the AI systems for the Assassin's Creed franchise and was lead programmer on Child of Light) join us on our very first episode to discuss narrative systems, whether or not cutscenes are evil, the systemic possibilities of a game based on The Good Wife, procedurally generated stories and level design, what an open world game without a main quest would be like, silent protagonists, if narrative is a game mechanic, and much more!

Our Guests on the Internet

Brendon's Website and Twitter

Brie's Website and Twitter

Stuff We Talked About

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander

'Narrative is not a game mechanic' by Raph Koster

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.